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Chatham’s Fiddlehead Farm Wins Good Food Award!

A Chatham County farm has won a coveted Good Food Award in recognition of superior craftsmanship and a commitment to sustainability and social good. Emily Boynton of Fiddlehead Farm traveled to San Francisco with her family earlier this year to receive the award alongside other food producers and farmers from around the country. The awards are given to winners in several categories: beer, cider, charcuterie, cheese, chocolate, coffee, confections, preserved fish, honey, oils, pantry, pickles, preserves, spirits, and elixirs. Fiddlehead Farm won a Good Food Award for their roasted strawberry preserves. They were also Good Food Award finalists in 2016 and 2017.

Fiddlehead Farm has quite a devoted following of fans in the Triangle region so no one here was surprised to learn that Emily had won a Good Food Award. Emily makes over 60 different products from her kitchen in Pittsboro, including jams, jellies, preserves, hot sauces, finishing salts, and baked goods.

Emily Boynton of Fiddlehead Farm won a Good Food Award for her roasted strawberry preserves, shown here with a few of the other 60 products she makes. Photo by Debbie Roos.

Fiddlehead Farm started out as a vendor at the Chatham Mills Farmers’ Market in 2010 selling vegetables and homemade bread. The market didn’t have anyone selling jam and so Emily saw an opportunity. She was already making jams, hot sauces, and pickles at home because she wanted her family to eat well. But a visit to her mother-in-law Nancy’s house in South Carolina provided a turning point. Nancy gave Emily the Blue Chair Jam Cookbook and that book really opened her eyes to the world of jam-making. Emily was inspired by the book’s creative fruit combinations and it gave her the confidence to make her own recipes. She bought a copper jam pot and never looked back!

All of Fiddlehead Farm’s products are made in small batches which means the focus is on high quality seasonal ingredients. Emily sources her ingredients from local organic and sustainable farms with the exception of fruits like citrus and cranberries that are not grown in North Carolina. You can view a list of the farms that Emily sources from on her website. She also uses organic sugar and lemon juice and locally milled organic flour and oats for her baked goods.

Emily Boynton cutting up blood oranges to make marmalade. Photo by Debbie Roos.

The small batch processing approach means that each batch is unique. Jam made from strawberries may taste different depending on which farm grew the berries. Emily knows that it’s the quality of the fruit that makes a jam stand out. She lists the farm names on her labels so that customers will know where the ingredients came from. That way her customers will know which farm grows their favorite strawberries, or which apple variety makes the best apple butter.

Emily sources ingredients from dozens of local farms and always lists the farm name on the label. Photo by Debbie Roos.

Emily and her family grow many of the vegetables and herbs they use in their products. Their biggest crop is peppers: Carolina Reapers, Trinidad Scorpions, ghost peppers, chocolate and mustard habaneros, datils, jalapenos, and others that they use to make hot sauce and pepper jelly. They grow unusual herbs like cinnamon basil, anise hyssop, and lemon balm to use in the jams and salts. Their popular Blueberry Cinnamon Basil Jam was a finalist for a Good Food Award in 2016. Kids Willie and Daniel help with harvesting peppers, fruits, and honeysuckle.

Emily’s friend Katie Thornburg helps in the kitchen. Emily calls Katie the Granola Guru. Katie recently developed a recipe for a reduced sugar granola that they named Katie’s Blend and it’s become a huge hit with customers. Emily also gets help in the kitchen from her family: husband David is a scientist and enjoys making products that have recipes that require exact measuring – for example, jellies that require pectin. Emily prefers being creative and not having to follow an exact recipe. Emily’s youngest son Willie also enjoys hulling strawberries and prepping jars for filling.

At the peak of the season Emily makes about 35 different jams. They get as much fruit from North Carolina as possible – if it grows here, they buy it local. They even get Meyer lemons grown in Chatham County! Every summer they visit David’s family’s cherry orchard on Lake Michigan and bring back cherries, currants, gooseberries, raspberries, and black raspberries.

The roasted strawberries are now cooking with sugar and lemon juice and will become award-winning roasted strawberry preserves! Photo by Debbie Roos.

Filling jars with roasted strawberry preserves. Photo by Debbie Roos.

Filling jars with roasted strawberry preserves. Photo by Debbie Roos.

Water bath for roasted strawberry preserves. Photo by Debbie Roos.

I love that Emily even finds a way to make tasty products out of things that we consider invasive weeds! They harvest Japanese honeysuckle blooms and use them to make Blueberry Honeysuckle Jam and Tangerine Honeysuckle Marmalade. Her popular Bloumi-berry Jam is made from blueberries combined with the berries of autumn olive (Eleagnus umbellata), an invasive plant found in North Carolina woodlands.

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About Growing Small Farms

From Bear Creek to Bynum, Silk Hope to Moncure, the Chatham County landscape is dotted with small farms. Farmers throughout the county are known for growing a great diversity of agricultural products, including vegetables, fruits, cut flowers, herbs, poultry, beef, pork, dairy products, and other goods. As one of the few counties in the state to actually experience an increase in the number of farms in the past decade, Chatham is also “growing small farms.”

Many of Chatham’s newer farms are owned by first-generation farmers attracted to the challenges and rewards of making a living from the land. Chatham has a large concentration of farms practicing organic and sustainable agriculture that strive to be environmentally responsible, economically viable, and socially just. In a time when the trend in conventional agriculture is towards fewer and larger farms and many of North Carolina’s “conventional” farmers are struggling, the sustainable and diverse agriculture practiced by Chatham’s small farms provides the best hope for keeping agriculture a viable part of the community.

Chatham’s proximity to upscale Triangle-area markets ensures a steady demand for the organic and sustainably-grown crops produced by area farmers. Four farmers’ markets in the county provide residents with ample opportunities to shop and interact with local growers throughout the long growing season. Many area farms offer opportunities for on-farm visits where visitors get the chance to make the connection between food and agriculture.

Small farms also provide many indirect benefits. They help maintain open space valued by people and wildlife. Visitors flock to Chatham for the beauty of its rural landscape. The challenge is to preserve this rural landscape in the face of development pressures from Raleigh and Chapel Hill. One way to preserve the rural landscape is to help keep farms in the county.

The Chatham County Center of North Carolina Cooperative Extension has long recognized the value and importance of the sustainable agriculture practiced by small farms in the area. In 1994, the Chatham County Center created a new county agent position to support the unique needs of these small farmers. Today, this position is fully funded by the Chatham County government, which recognizes the value of sustainable agriculture to the county. Chatham County Agricultural Extension Agent Debbie Roos works with farmers to promote increased awareness, understanding, and practice of sustainable agriculture through monthly educational workshops, a website, on-farm visits, and other consultation.

Roos developed the Growing Small Farms website in 2002 after a survey revealed that approximately 95% of local farmers regularly used the Internet. The site has since grown to over 500 pages and receives over 25,000 visitors each month. Growing Small Farms is also on Twitter and Facebook.

Farms don’t exist without consumers, so please take the time to get to know the farmers in your community and support their efforts to keep Chatham County green! Visit our farmers’ markets to purchase the freshest vegetables, fruits, meats, baked goods, and other products, all grown or made locally by the person selling it to you. The Buy Local Guide lists community supported agriculture farms, on-farm stands, pick-your-own farms, wineries, and more. Check out the local farm profiles and farm photos on this website for a glimpse of the diversity that allows Chatham’s farms to prosper.

NC State University and N.C. A&T State University work in tandem, along with federal, state and local governments, to form a strategic partnership called N.C. Cooperative Extension, which staffs local offices in all 100 counties and with the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians.

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